What can business do next, now that Margaret Wilson’s Supreme Court is on its way?
Labour MP Tim Barnett has supplied one answer: make more submissions to Parliament’s justice and electoral law committee, which he chairs. The committee is moving on to a wider inquiry into the constitution.
Major changes in management of the state sector are planned by the government and it is trying to build cross-party support in advance of legislation due in Parliament in November.
The changes, which follow the “review of the centre” in 2001, will:
* give more flexibility in financial reporting and control to improve coordination between departments and more clearly link their work to government objectives;
Matt Robson’s contribution to last week’s debate on the Gambling Bill spoke volumes — but not the volumes he would have liked.
Robson wanted tighter controls than the new law imposes. He said he had hoped that working with the Greens he might have got that.
Instead, Labour’s leadership had to turn to United Future for a majority for the bill.
Want to get rid of the Queen? Have a written constitution? Entrench the Treaty of Waitangi? Or stop all such ideas in their tracks? You look to be about to get a chance to put your case.
After it reports the Supreme Court Bill back to the House, probably this week, Parliament’s justice and electoral law committee intends to inquire into the constitution.
Tony Blair said Saddam Hussein could activate MWD in 45 minutes. George Bush said Hussein had been trying to buy uranium in Africa. Helen Clark said in last year’s election campaign all relevant documents on the 2000 GM corn scare would be made public.
Blair was wrong. Bush was wrong. Clark was wrong.
Not the best place to build a nation: on the sand. But Helen Clark has no choice of ground. This is a defining moment for the nation.
For the most vociferous Maori Clark’s foreshore/seabed proposal is the last great land grab. For large numbers of non-Maori the Maori claim for title is a beach too far.
It is 2pm Friday in Feilding town square and about 250 whingers — sorry, farmers and spouses — have turned up from the surrounding lush acreages that make the town rich.
They’re prosperous, these folk, even in the dairy downturn. A local vehicle dealer says four-wheel-drive tanks are going out the door like hot cakes. The cockies have not put their chequebooks away.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer said Harry Duynhoven’s breach of the Electoral Act could be considered “trifling” and ignored by Parliament. “The law does not concern itself with trifling matters,” he told Parliament’s privileges committee.
Palmer is a former Prime Minister, a much-published constitutional lawyer who rewrote the Constitution Act in 1986 and an adviser to rich corporations on constitutional and administrative law and practice.
This coming Friday Labour, Progressive and United Future will mark a year in harness. Last Wednesday United Future MP Marc Alexander had this to say: “Labour is starting to inspire confidence in the same way that the Titanic inspires buoyancy.”
Not very collegial. What’s going on?
Alexander was objecting to Labour’s “evangelical bunch of ideologues” who “think that minority rights override those of just about everyone else”.
First, note an under-reported visit by China’s No 2, Li Chang-chun, two weekends ago. Next, note Helen Clark’s visit to Korea last weekend. Then prepare for a conference in November on relations with Asia, to be launched later this month. New Zealand’s Asia policy is being revitalised.